The same type of data is often entered and stored in many different formats. For example, some dates are in the form CCYYMMDD (19990101), other dates in the format of MM/DD/CCYY (01/01/1999), yet other dates in the format of M/D/YY (1/1/99). To perform analysis on the data, it is converted to the same format. For example, some analysis may specify that phone numbers are to be formatted following the form (206) 555-1212, whereas other analysis may specify that formatting be removed from the phone numbers (i.e. 2065551212). Different methods may be used to transform the data. For example, different transformation functions may be used and/or code may be developed to transform the data.